Home visiting programme participation among children enrolled in South Carolina Medicaid

Home visiting programmes are known to be associated with greater well-child visit compliance, but there is mixed evidence of their association with emergency department visits. This study is the first to present model–neutral evidence of an association between home-visiting participation, well-child visits and emergency department visits. De-identified, propensity-score matched claims data from South Carolina Medicaid in the US was employed to evaluate healthcare use. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between well-child visit compliance and home-visiting participation with differences in emergency department visits and well-child visit examined via linear regression. Well-child visit compliance varies by age, but for certain age groups, home-visiting clients are significantly more likely to meet well-child visit recommendations. On average, home-visiting clients had a significantly higher number of emergency department visits. It is concluded that policy makers and programme developers may use this information to improve well-child visit adherence among home-visiting clients.